MICHAEL OWEN last night backed Steven Gerrard to recover from his disastrous blunder that led to France's stoppage-time victory in Lisbon on Sunday.

MICHAEL OWEN last night backed Steven Gerrard to recover from his disastrous blunder that led to France's stoppage-time victory in Lisbon on Sunday.

The Liverpool captain's underhit back pass let in Thierry Henry and forced goal-keeper David James into the desperate challenge that allowed Zinedine Zidane's penalty winner.

David Beckham also shouldered some blame for failing to convert a penalty that would have put England 2-0 up earlier in the second half.

But Owen insisted both players' errors were just "part and parcel" of the game - and refused to lay any blame for Sunday's extraordinary turna-round on them.

He said: "You can say things to David and Steven - but they don't totally comfort you. It is something they have to deal with.

"I had to deal with it through last season at Liver-pool. I missed penalties and was at fault in certain things.

"It's just part and parcel of being in a team and you always feel like you have let the team down.

"But David and Steven haven't done that. If we are going to do anything in this tournament Steven and David are the players we are looking at to help us progress.

"I see Steven every day and he is a strong character and David has had worst setbacks than that in his career."

The striker could particularly sympathise with Beck-ham over the spot-kick miss - Owen had gone through similar emotions last season with his misses at Portsmouth and Southampton.

And he is not looking to take over penalty-taking duties from Beckham - who also missed his previous Eng-land penalty against Turkey in last October's vital Euro qualifier in Istanbul - if the Real Madrid star wants to continue the role.

Owen added: "To be fair to Becks, (Fabien) Barthez pulled off a great save from the penalty. I don't think it was a bad penalty.

"These days keepers move so early. Every rule gets changed and they are loaded in the keepers' favour. Will David be penalty-taker now? Yes, if he wants it.

"It's probably the cruellest game I've played in. I can only think of the Manchester United-Bayern Munich European Cup final being similar to that and I was not involved.

"I've never seen anything like it and have never felt so harshly done by at the end of a match.

"We deserved at least a point but we can't be down for too long. We've not got to feel sorry for ourselves.

"The positive side is that over 90 minutes, we've played the favourites and defending champions and been better than them.

"The frustration is that we've lost but that's football. If we'd played badly and lost then we would have had problems.

"We can't feel sorry for ourselves or blame luck. You need luck to win a tournament. We didn't have it against France but let's hope it evens itself out later in the tournament.

"Everyone can look at each other in the eye and be proud - we gave them a great game.

"There are plenty of players we were proud of - Wayne Rooney, Ledley King - two players who have never played in a tournament before were great. Rooney played really well. Everyone expected that because he's a fantastic player. He and Ledley were two of our better players."